I have received your letters. They
are similar to a number of letters on the same subject I have
received from other comrades during the past few months. I have
decided, however, to answer you particularly, because you put things
more bluntly and thereby help the achievement of clarity. True, the
answers you give in your letters to the questions raised are wrong,
but that is another matter -- of that we shall speak below.

Let us get down to business.

1. THE CONCEPT "NATION"

The Russian Marxists have long had
their theory of the nation. According to this theory, a nation is a
historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the
basis of the common possession of four principal characteristics,
namely: a common language, a common territory, a common economic
life, and a common psychological make-up manifested in common
specific features of national culture. This theory, as we know, has
received general recognition in our Party.

It is evident from your letters
that you consider this theory inadequate. You therefore propose that
the

page 349

four characteristics of a nation be supplemented
by a fifth, namely, that a nation possesses its own, separate
national state. You consider that there is not and cannot be a
nation unless this fifth characteristic is present.

I think that the scheme you
propose, with its new, fifth characteristic of the concept "nation,"
is profoundly mistaken and cannot be justiIied either theoretically
or in practice, politically.

According to your scheme, only such
nations are to be recognised as nations as have their own state,
separate from others, whereas all oppressed nations which have no
independent statehood would have to be deleted from the category of
nations; moreover, the struggle of oppressed nations against
national oppression and the struggle of colonial peoples against
imperialism would have to be excluded from the concept "national
movement" and "national-liberation movement."

More than that. According to your
scheme we would have to assert:

a) that the Irish became a
nation only after the formation of the "Irish Free State,"
and that before that they did not constitute a nation;

b) that the Norwegians were
not a nation before Norway's secession from Sweden, and became a
nation only after that secession;

c) that the Ukrainians were
not a nation when the Ukraine formed part of tsarist Russia; that
they became a nation only after they seceded from Soviet Russia
under the Central Rada and Hetman Skoropadsky, but again ceased to
be a nation after they united their Ukrainian Soviet Republic with
the other Soviet Republics to form the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics.

page 350

A great many such examples could be
cited.

Obviously, a scheme which leads to
such absurd conclusions cannot be regarded as a scientific scheme.

In practice, politically, your
scheme inevitably leads to the justification of national,
imperialist oppression, whose exponents emphatically refuse to
recognise as real nations oppressed and unequal nations which have
no separate national state of their own, and consider that this
circumstance gives them the right to oppress these nations.

That is apart from the fact that
your scheme provides a justification for the bourgeois nationalists
in our Soviet Republics who argue that the Soviet nations ceased to
be nations when they agreed to unite their national Soviet Republics
into a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

That is how matters stand with
regard to "supplementing" and "amending" the
Russian Marxist theory of the nation.

Only one thing remains, and that is
to admit that the Russian Marxist theory of the nation is the only
correct theory.

2. THE RISE AND DEVELOPMENTOF
NATIONS

One of the grave mistakes you make
is that you lump together all existing nations and fail to see any
fundamental difference between them.

There are different kinds of
nations. There are nations which developed in the epoch of rising
capital-

page 351

ism, when the bourgeoisie, destroying feudalism
and feudal disunity, gathered the parts of nations together and
cemented them. These are the so-called "modern" nations.

You assert that nations arose and
existed before capitalism. But how could nations have arisen and
existed before capitalism, in the period of feudalism, when
countries were split up into separate, independent principalities,
which, far from being bound together by national ties, emphatically
denied the necessity for such ties? Your erroneous assertions
notwithstanding, there were no nations in the pre-capitalist period,
nor could there be, because there were as yet no national markets
and no economic or cultural national centres, and, consequently,
there were none of the factors which put an end to the economic
disunity of a given people and draw its hitherto disunited parts
together into one national whole.

Of course, the elements of
nationhood -- language, territory, common culture, etc. -- did not
fall from the skies, but were being formed gradually, even in the
pre-capitalist period. But these elements were in a rudimentary
state and, at best, were only a potentiality, that is, they
constituted the possibility of the formation of a nation in the
future, given certain favourable conditions. The potentiality became
a reality only in the period of rising capitalism, with its national
market and its economic and cultural centres.

In this connection it would be well
to recall the remarkable words of Lenin on the subject of the rise
of nations, contained in his pamphlet What
the "Friends of the People" Are
and How They Fight the Social-

page 352

Democrats. Controverting the Narodnik
Mikhailovsky, who derived the rise of nationalties and national
unity from the development of gentile ties, Lenin says:

"And so,
national ties are a continuation and generalisation of gentile ties!
Mr. Mikhailovsky, evidently, borrows his ideas of the history of
society from the fairy-tale that is taught to school boys. The
history of society -- this copybook doctrine runs -- is that first
there was the family, that nucleus of all society . . . then the
family grew into the tribe, and the tribe grew into the state. If
Mr. Mikhailovsky solemnly repeats this childish nonsense, it only
goes to show -- apart from everything else -- that he has not the
slightest notion of the course even of Russian history. While one
might speak of gentile life in ancient Rus, there can be no doubt
that by the Middle Ages, the era of the Muscovite tsars, these
gentile ties no longer existed, that is to say, the state was based
not at all on gentile unions but on territorial unions: the
landlords and the monasteries took their peasants from various
localities, and the village communities thus formed were purely
territorial unions. But one could hardly speak of national ties in
the true sense of the word at that time: the state was divided into
separate lands, sometimes even principalities, which preserved
strong traces of former autonomy, peculiarities of administration,
at times their own troops (the local boyars went to war at the head
of their own companies), their own customs borders, and so forth.
Only the modern period of Russian history (beginning approximately
with the seventeenth century) is characterised by an actual merging
of all such regions, lands and principalities into a single whole.
This merging, most esteemed Mr. Mikhailovsky, was not brought about
by gentile ties, nor even by their continuation and generalisation:
it was brought about by the growth of exchange between regions, the
gradual growth of commodity circulation and the concentration of the
small local markets into a single, all-Russian market. Since the
leaders and masters of this process were the merchant capitalists,
the creation of these national ties was nothing but the creation of
bourgeois ties" (see Vol. 1, pp. 72-73[72]).

page 353

That is how matters stand with
regard to the rise of the so-called "modern" nations.

The bourgeoisie and its nationalist
parties were throughout this period the chief leading force of such
nations. Class peace within the nation for the sake of "national
unity"; expansion of the territory of one's own nation by
seizure of the national territories of others; distrust and hatred
of other nations, suppression of national minorities; a united front
with imperialism -- such is the ideological, social and political
stock-in trade of these nations.

Such nations must be qualified as
bourgeois nations. Examples are the French, British, Italian, North
American and other similar nations. The Russian, Ukrainian, Tatar,
Armenian, Georgian and other nations in Russia were likewise
bourgeois nations before the establishment of the dictatorship of
the proletariat and the Soviet system in our country.

Naturally, the fate of such nations
is linked with the fate of capitalism; with the fall of capitalism,
such nations must depart from the scene.

It is precisely
such bourgeois nations that Stalin's pamphlet Marxism
and the National Question has in
mind when it says that "a nation is not merely a historical
category but a historical category belonging to a definite epoch,
the epoch of rising capitalism," that "the fate of a
national movement, which is essentially a bourgeois movement, is
naturally bound up with the fate of the bourgeoisie," that "the
final disappearance of a national movement is possible only with the
downfall of the bourgeoisie," and that "only under the
reign of socialism can peace be fully established."[73]

page 354

That is how matters stand with
regard to the bourgeois nations.

But there are other nations. These
are the new, Soviet nations, which developed and took shape on the
basis of the old, bourgeois nations after the overthrow of
capitalism in Russia, after the elimination of the bourgeoisie and
its nationalist parties, after the establishment of the Soviet
system.

The working class and its
internationalist party are the force that cements these new nations
and leads them. An alliance between the working class and the
working peasantry within the nation for the elimination of the
survivals of capitalism in order that socialism may be built
triumphantly; abolition of the survivals of national oppression in
order that the nations and national minorities may be equal and may
develop freely; elimination of the survivals of nationalism in order
that friendship may be knit between the peoples and internationalism
firmly established; a united front with all oppressed and unequal
nations in the struggle against the policy of annexation and wars of
annexation, in the struggle against imperialism -- such is the
spiritual, and social and political complexion of these nations.

Such nations must be qualified as
socialist nations.

These new nations arose and
developed on the basis of old, bourgeois nations, as a result of the
elimination of capitalism -- by their radical transformation on
socialist lines. Nobody can deny that the present socialist nations
of the Soviet Union -- the Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Tatar,
Bashkir, Uzbek, Kazakh, Azerbaijanian, Georgian, Armenian and other
nations --

page 355

differ radically from the corresponding old,
bourgeois nations of the old Russia both in class composition and
spiritual complexion and in social and political interests and
aspirations.

Such are the two types of nations
known to history.

You do not agree with linking the
fate of nations, in this case the old, bourgeois nations, with the
fate of capitalism. You do not agree with the thesis that, with the
elimination of capitalism, the old, bourgeois nations will be
eliminated. But with what indeed could the fate of these nations be
linked if not with the fate of capitalism? Is it so diIficult to
understand that when capitalism disappears, the bourgeois nations it
gave rise to must also disappear? Surely, you do not think that the
old, bourgeois nations can exist and develop under the Soviet
system, under the dictatorship of the proletariat? That would be the
last straw. . . .

You are afraid that the elimination
of the nations existing under capitalism is tantamount to the
elimination of nations in general, to the elimination of all
nations. Why, on what yrounds? Are you really unaware of the fact
that, besides bourgeois nations, there are other nations, socialist
nations, which are much more solidly united and capable of surviving
than any bourgeois nation?

Your mistake lies precisely in the
fact that you see no other nations except bourgeois nations, and,
consequently, you have overlooked the whole epoch of formation of
socialist nations in the Soviet Union, nations which arose on the
ruins of the old, bourgeois nations.

The fact of the matter is that the
elimination of the bourgeois nations signifies the elimination not
of

page 356

nations in general, but only of the bourgeois
nations. On the ruins of the old, bourgeois nations new, socialist
nations are arising and developing, and they are far more solidly
united than any bourgeois nation, because they are exempt from the
irreconcilable class contradictions that corrode the bourgeois
nations, and are far more representative of the whole people than
any bourgeois nation.

3. THE FUTURE OF NATIONS AND
OF NATIONAL LANGUAGES

You commit a grave error in putting
a sign of equality between the period of the victory of socialism in
one country and the period of the victory of socialism on a world
scale, in asserting that the disappearance of national differences
and national languages, the merging of nations and the formation of
one common language, are possible and necessary not only with the
victory of socialism on a world scale, but also with the victory of
socialism in one country. Moreover, you confuse entirely different
things: "the abolition of national oppression" with "the
elimination of national differences," "the abolition of
national state barriers" with "the dying away of nations,"
with "the merging of nations."

It must be pointed out that for
Marxists to confuse these diverse concepts is absolutely
impermissible. National oppression in our country was abolished long
ago, but it by no means follows from this that national differences
have disappeared and that nations in our country have been
eliminated. National state barriers, together with frontier guards
and customs, were

page 357

abolished in our country long
ago, but it by no means follows from this that the nations have
already become merged and that the national languages have
disappeared, that these languages have been supplanted by some one
language common to all our nations.

You are displeased with the speech
I delivered at the Communist University of the Peoples of the East
(1925),[74]
in which I repudiated the thesis that with the victory of socialism
in one country, in our country, for example, national
languages will die away, that the nations will be merged, and in
place of the national languages one common language will appear.

You consider that this statement of
mine contradicts Lenin's well-known thesis that it is the aim of
socialism not only to abolish the division of mankind into small
states and every form of isolation of nations, not only to bring the
nations closer together, but also to merge them.

You consider, further, that it also
contradicts an other of Lenin's theses, namely, that with the
victory of socialism on a world scale, national differences
and national languages will begin to die away, that after this
victory national languages will begin to be supplanted by one common
language.

That is quite wrong, comrades. It
is a profound illusion.

I have already said that it is
impermissible for Marxists to confuse and lump together such diverse
phenomena as "the victory of socialism in one country" and
"the victory of socialism on a world scale." It should not
be forgotten that these diverse phenomena reflect two entirely
diiferent epochs, distinct from one another

page 358

not only in time (which is very important), but
in their very nature.

National distrust, national
isolation, national enmity and national conflicts are, of course,
stimulated and fostered not by some "innate" sentiment of
national animosity, but by the striving of imperialism to subjugate
other nations and by the fear inspired in these nations by the
menace of national enslavement. Undoubtedly, so long as world
imperialism exists this striving and this fear will exist -- and,
consequently, national distrust, national isolation, national enmity
and national conflicts will exist in the vast majority of countries.
Can it be asserted that the victory of socialism and the abolition
of imperialism in one country signify the abolition of imperialism
and national oppression in the majority of countries? Ohviously not.
But it follows from this that the victory of socialism in one
country, notwithstanding the fact that it seriously weakens world
imperialism, does not and cannot create the conditions necessary for
the merging of the nations and the national languages of the world
into one integral whole.

The period of the victory of
socialism on a world scale differs from the period of the victory of
socialism in one country primarily in the fact that it will abolish
imperialism in all countries, will abolish both the striving
to subjugate other nations and the fear inspired by the menace of
national enslavement, will radically undermine national distrust and
national enmity, will unite the nations into one world socialist
economic system, and will thus create the real conditions necessary
for the gradual merging of all nations into one.

page 359

Such is the fundamental difference
between these two periods.

But it follows from this that to
confuse these two different periods and to lump them together is to
commit an unpardonable mistake. Take the speech I delivered at the
Communist University of the Toilers of the East. There I said:

"Some
people (Kautsky, for instance) talk of the creation of a single
universal language and the dying away of all other languages in the
period of socialism. I have little faith in this theory of a single,
all-embracing language. Experience, at any rate, speaks against
rather than for such a theory. Until now what has happened has been
that the socialist revolution has not diminished but rather
increased the number of languages; for, by stirring up the lowest
sections of humauity and pushing them on to the political arena, it
awakens to new life a number ol hitherto unknown or little known
nationalities. Who could have imagined that the old, tsarist Russia
consisted of not less than fifty nations and national groups? The
Oclober Revolution, however, by breaking the old chains and bringing
a number of forgotten peoples and nationalities on to the scene,
gave them new life and a new development."[75]

From this passage it is evident
that I was opposing people of the type of Kautsky, who always was
and has remained a dilettante on the national question, who does not
understand the mechanics of the development of nations and has no
inkling of the colossal power of stability possessed by nations, who
believes that the merging of nations is possible long before the
victory of socialism, already under the bourgeois-democratic order,
and who, servilely praising the assimilating "work" of the
Germans in Bohemia, light-mindedly asserts that the Czechs are
almost Germanised, that, as a nation, the Czechs have no future.

page 360

From this passage it is evident,
further, that what I had in mind in my speech was not the period of
the victory of socia]ism on a world scale, but exclusively
the period of the victory of socialism in one country. And I
affirmed (and continue to affirm) that the period of the victory of
socialism in one country does not create the necessary conditions
for the merging of nations and national languages, that, on the
contrary, this period creates favourable conditions for the
renaissance and flourishing of the nations that were formerly
oppressed by tsarist imperialism and have now been liberated from
national oppression by the Soviet revolution.

From this passage it is apparent,
lastly, that you have overlooked the colossial difference between
the two different historical periods, that, because of this, you
have failed to understand the meaning of Stalin's speech and, as a
result, have got lost in the wilderness of your own errors.

Let us pass to Lenin's theses on
the dying away and merging of nations after the victory of socialism
on a world scale.

"The aim of socialism is not
only to abolish the division of mankind into small states and all
isolation of nations, not only to draw the nations together, but to
merge them. . . . Just as mankind can arrive at the abolition of
classes only by passing through a transition period of the
dictatorship of the oppressed class, so mankind can arrive at the
inevitable merging of nations only by passing through a transition
period of complete

page 361

liberation of all the
oppressed nations, i.e., of their freedom of secession" (see
Vol. XIX, p. 40[76]).

And here is another thesis of
Lenin's, which you like wise do not quote in full:

"As long as national and state
differences exist among peoples and countries -- and these
differences will continue to exist for a very, very long time even
after the dictatorship of the proletariat has been eslablished on a
world scale -- the unity of international tactics of the communist
working-class movement of all countries demands, not the elimination
of variety, not the abolition of national differences (that is a
foolish dream at the present moment), but such an application of the
fundamental principles of communism (Soviet power and the
dictatorship of the proletariat) as would correctly modify these
principles in certain particulars, correctly adapt and apply them to
national and national-state differences" (Vol. XXV, p. 227).

It should be noted that this
passage is from Lenin's pamphlet "Left-Wing
" Communism, an Infantile Disorder,
published in 1920, that is, after the victory of the
socialist revolution in one country, after the victory of
socialism in our country.

From these passages it is evident
that Lenin does not assign the process of the dying away of national
differences and the merging of nations to the period of the victory
of socialism in one country, but exclusively to the period after
the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat on a world
scale, that is, to the period of the victory of socialism in all
countries, when the foundations of a world socialist economy have
already been laid.

From these passages it is evident,
further, that the attempt to assign the process of the dying away of
national differences to the period of the victory of socialism

page 362

in one country, in our country, is qualified by
Lenin as a "foolish dream."

From these passages it is evident,
moreover, that Stalin was absolutely right when, in the speech he
delivered at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, he
denied that it was possible for national differences and national
languages to die away in the period of the victory of socialism in
one country, in our country, and that you were absolutely wrong in
uphold ing something that is the direct opposite of Stalin's thesis.

From these passages it is evident,
lastly, that, in confusing the two different periods of the victory
of socialism, you failed to understand Lenin, distorted Lenin's line
on the national question and, as a consequence, involuntarily headed
for a rupture with Leninism.

It would be incorrect to think that
after the defeat of world imperialism national differences will be
abolished and national langnages will die away immediately, at one
stroke, by decree from above, so to speak. Nothing is more erroneous
than this view. To attempt to bring about the merging of nations by
decree from above, by compulsion, would be playing into the hands of
the imperialists, it would spell disaster to the cause of the
liberation of nations, and be fatal to the cause of organising
co-operation and fraternity among nations. Such a policy would be
tantamount to a policy of assimilation.

You know, of course, that the
policy of assimilation is absolutely excluded from the arsenal of
Marxism-Leninism, as being an anti-popular and counter-revolutionary
policy, a fatal policy.

page 363

Furthermore, we know that nations
and national languages possess an extraordinary stability and
tremendous power of resistance to the policy of assimilation. The
Turkish assimilators -- the most brutal of all assimilators --
mangled and mutilated the Balkan nations for hundreds of years, yet
not only did they fail to destroy them, but in the end were forced
to capitulate. The tsarist-Russian Russifiers and the
German-Prussian Germanisers, who yielded little in brutality to the
Turkish assimilators, rent and mangled the Polish nation for over a
hundred years, just as the Persian and Turkish assimilators for
hundreds of years rent and mangled and massacred the Armenian and
Georgian nations, yet, far from destroying these nations, in the end
they were also forced to capitulate.

All these circumstances must be
taken into account in order correctly to forecast the probable
course of events as regards the development of nations directly
after the defeat of world imperialism.

It would be a mistake to think that
the first stage of the period of the world dictatorship of the
proletariat will mark the beginning of the dying away of nations and
national languages, the beginning of the formation of one common
language. On the contrary, the first stage, during which national
oppression will be completely abolished, will be a stage marked by
the growth and flourishing of the formerly oppressed nations and
national languages, the consolidation of equality among nations, the
elimination of mutual natioual distrust, and the establishment and
strengthening of international ties among nations.

Only in the second stage of the
period of the world

page 364

dictatorship of the proletariat, to the extent
that a single world socialist economy is built up in place of the
world capitalist economy -- only in that stage will something in the
nature of a common language begin to take shape; for only in that
stage will the nations feel the need to have, in addition to their
own national languages, a common international language -- for
convenience of intercourse and of economic, cultural and political
co-operation. Consequently, in this stage, national languages and a
common international language will exist side by side. It is
possible that, at first, not one world economic centre will be
formed, common to all nations and with one common language, but
several zonal economic centres for separate groups of nations, with
a separate common language for each group of nations, and that only
later will these centres combine into one common world socialist
economic centre, with one language common to all the nations.

In the next stage of the period of
world dictatorship of the pro]etariat -- when the world socialist
system of economy becomes sulficiently consolidated and socialism
becomes part and parcel of the life of the peoples, and when
practice convinces the nations of the advantages of a common
language over national languages -- national differences and
languages will begin to die away and make room for a world language,
common to all nations.

Such, in my opinion, is the
approximate picture of the future of nations, a picture of the
development of the nations along the path to their merging in the
future.

page 365

4. THE POLICY OF THE PARTY ON
THE NATIONAL QUESTION

One of your mistakes is that you
regard the national question not as a part of the general question
of the social and political development of society, subordinated to
this general question, but as something self-contained and constant,
whose direction and character remain basically unchanged throughout
the course of history. Hence you fail to see what every Marxist
sees, namely, that the national question does not always have one
and the same character, that the character and tasks of the national
movement vary with the different periods in the development of the
revolution.

Logically, it is this that explains
the deplorable fact that you so lightly confuse and lump together
diverse periods of development of the revolution, and fail to
understand that the changes in the character and tasks of the
revolution in the various stages of its development give rise to
corresponding changes in the character and aims of the national
question, that in conformity with this the Party's policy on the
national question also changes, and that, consequent]y, the Party's
policy on the national question in one period of development of the
revolution cannot be violently severed from that period and
arbitrarily transferred to another period.

The Russian Marxists have always
started out from the proposition that the national question is a
part of the general question of the development of the revolution,
that at different stages of the revolution the national question has
different aims, corresponding to the

page 366

character of the revolution at each given
historical moment, and that the Party's policy on the national
question changes in conformity with this.

In the period preceding the First
World War, when history made a bourgeois-democratic
revolution the task of the moment in Russia, the Russian Marxists
linked the solution of the national question with the fate of the
democratic revolution in Russia. Our Party held that the overthrow
of tsarism, the elimination of the survivals of feudalism, and the
complete democratisation of the country provided the best solution
of the national question that was possible within the framework of
capitalism.

". . . I assert that there is
only one solution of the national question, in so far as one is
possible at all in the capitalist world -- and that solution is
consistent democratism. In proof, I could cite, among others,
Switzerland" (vol. XVII, p. 150[77]).

To this same period belongs
Stalin's pamphlet, Marxism and the National Question, which
among other things says:

"The final disappearance of a
national movement is possible only with the downfall of the
bourgeoisie. Only under the reign of socialism can peace be fully
established. But even within the framework of capitalism it is
possible to reduce the national struggle to a minimum to undermine
it at the root, to render it as harmless as possible to the
proletariat. This is borne out, for example, by Switzerland and
America. It requires that the country

page 367

should be democratised and the
nations be given the opportunity of free development."[78]

In the next period, the period of
the First World War, when the prolonged war between the two
imperialist coalitions undermined the might of world imperialism,
when the crisis of the world capitalist system reached an extreme
degree, when, alongside the working class of the "metropolitan
countries," the colonial and dependent countries also joined
the movement for emancipation, when the national question grew into
the national and colonial question, when the united front of the
working class of the advanced capitalist countries and of the
oppressed peoples of the colonies and dependent countries began to
be a real force, when, consequently, the socialist revolution became
tbe question of the moment, the Russian Marxists could no longer
content themselves with the policy of the preceding period, and they
found it necessary to link the solution of the national and colonial
question with the fate of the socialist revolution.

The Party held that the overthrow
of the power of capital and the organisation of the dictatorship of
the proletariat, the expulsion of the imperialist troops from the
colonial and dependent countries and the securing of the right of
these countries to secede and to form their own national states, the
elimination of national enmity and nationalism and the strengthening
of international ties between peoples, the organisation of a single
socialist national economy and the establishment on this basis of
fraternal co-operation among peoples, constituted the best solution
of the national and colonial question under the given conditions.

page 368

Such was the policy of the Party in
that period.

That period is still far from
having entered into full force, for it has only just begun; but
there is no doubt that it will yet have its decisive word to say. .
. .

A question apart is the present
period of development of the revolution in our country and the
present policy of the Party.

It should be noted that so far our
country has proved to be the only one ready to overthrow
capitalism. And it really has overthrown capitalism and organised
the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Consequently, we still have a long
way to go to the establishment of the dictatorship of the
proletariat on a world scale, and still more to the victory
of socialism in all countries.

It should be noted, further, that
in putting an end to the rule of the bonrgeoisie, which has long
since abandoned its old democratic traditions, we, in passing,
solved the problem of the "complete democratisation of the
country," abolished the system of national oppression and
established equality of nations in our country.

As we know, these measures proved
to be the best way of eliminating nationalism and national enmity,
and of establishing mutual confidence among the peoples.

It should be noted, lastly, that
the abolition of national oppression led to the national revival of
the formerly oppressed nations of our country, to the development of
their national cultures, to the strengthening of friendly,
international ties among the peoples of our country and to their
mutual co-operation in the work of building socialism.

page 369

It should be borne in mind that
these regenerated nations are not the old, bourgeois nations, led by
the bourgeoisie, but new, socialist nations, which have arisen on
the ruins of the old nations and are led by the internationalist
party of the labouring masses.

In view of this, the Party
considered it necessary to help the regenerated nations of our
country to rise to their feet and attain their full stature, to
revive and develop their national cultures, widely to develop
schools, the atres and other cultural institutions functioning in
the native languages, to nationalise -- that is, to staff with
members of the given nation -- the Party, trade-union, co-operative,
state and economic apparatuses, to train their own, national, Party
and Soviet cadres, and to curb all elements -- who are, indeed, few
in number -- that try to hinder this policy of the Party.

This means that the Party supports,
and will continue to support, the development and flourishing of the
national cultures of the peoples of our country, that it will
encourage the strengthening of our new, socialist nations, that it
takes this matter under its protection and guardianship against
anti-Leninist elements of any kind.

It is apparent from your letters
that you do not approve this policy of our Party. That is because,
firstly, you confuse the new, socialist nations with the old,
bourgeois nations and do not understand that the national cultures
of our new, Soviet nations are in content socialist cultures.
Secondly, it is because -- you will excuse my bluntness -- you have
a very poor grasp of Leninism and are badly at sea on the national
question.

page 370

Consider, by way of example, the
following elementary matter. We all say that a cultural revolution
is needed in our country. If we mean this seriously and are not
merely indulging in idle chatter, then we must take at least the
first step in this direction: namely, we must make primary
education, and later secondary education, compulsory for all
citizens of the country, irrespective of their nationality. It is
obvious that without this no cultural development whatever, let
alone the so-called cultural revolution, will be possible in our
country. More, without this there will be neither any real progress
of our industry and agriculture, nor any reliable defence of our
country.

But how is this to be done, bearing
in mind that the percentage of illiteracy in our country is still
very high, that in a number of nations of our country there are
80-90 per cent of illiterates?

What is needed is to cover the
country with an extensive network of schools functioning in the
native languages, and to supply them with staffs of teachers who
know the native languages.

What is needed is to nationalise --
that is, to staff with members of the given nation -- all the
administrative apparatus, from Party and trade-union to state and
economic.

What is needed is widely to develop
the press, the theatre, the cinema and other cultural institutions
functioning in the native languages.

Why in the native languages? -- it
may be asked. Because only in their native, national languages can
the vast masses of the people be successful in cultural, political
and economic development.

page 371

In view of all that has been said,
I think it should not he so difficult to understand that Leninists
cannot pursue any other policy on the national question than the one
which is now being pursued in our country -- provided, of course,
they want to remain Leninists.